Tom Burgess AS Media Blog: 2013

Tuesday, 15 October 2013

Tuesday, 7 May 2013

Friday, 12 April 2013

Target Audience

Who would be the audience for your media product?

I believe these images represent my target audience as they are young and of both genders, and don’t look as if they are the sort of people who listen to rock music as they are not wearing stereotypical rocker clothes. They both look like fashionable young teenagers, or like the male he looks like he is between 19 and 21, which falls into my target audience age range. They look like the sort of people who would shop in popular, fashionable places like River Island and Next. They look like they are the sort of people who listen to popular music, and club music. They don’t look like young people who break the law and that means that they are probably working class people, from working class backgrounds and are not of the lower classes.

Skills Development

Looking back at your preliminary task (the college magazine task), what do you feel you have learnt in the progression from it to full product?

Form looking back at my preliminary task I have learnt the best ways to present a cover of a magazine, in my preliminary magazine the cover lines were all spread out with a big gap between lines of the same cover line. This makes it harder to determine where one cover line ends and one starts. In my music magazine I have made the lines on the same cover line closer together. I have also made the fonts easier to read and the colours of the cover lines are easier to see compared to the background. On the cover lines and the masthead I have created a stroke effect around the words making it easier to read. I have also linked colours from the masthead and cover lines. When it comes to the image on the cover of my music magazine, I have made the subject of the image the only thing in the shot on the cover. On my college magazine I have made a corridor the background with lots of things in the shot to draw the eye away from the person. In my music magazine I have made it so there is nothing else except the magazines contents to look at. I have also made the cover lines bigger in my music magazine to make them easy to see and it will draw the audience to read them. With the cover image I have used on my music magazine, I have used the magnetic lasso tool to cut out the image of the person and then I have put it onto a blank white background which I used a gradient tool to create a coloured background onto it. I have also used the gradient tool to create a light to dark colour on the cover lines are the masthead.

On my contents page, I have improved a lot. On my college magazine, there are no images, and there isn’t a very strong structure to it with just the words in the middle of the page. For the music magazine I have created I have added images, a structure, features and regulars. This separates different sections of the magazine and makes the audience want to read it more as it is more appealing. On my college magazine the numbering of all of the contents is consistent which means the audience know exactly what is in the magazine and can just scan to see the exact page of what they want to see. This means that the audience will not read all of the way through the magazine and contents will not be read. For the image I have used for the album artwork on my music magazines contents page, I have used a contrast and brightness effect to change the colours for it making the colours more vivid and clear compared to the dark background.

What ive Learnt about the technologies used

What have you learnt about technologies from the process of constructing this product?

The technologies I have learned to use through the completion of my media product have been Photoshop, the camera I have used and blogger online. By using Photoshop for making my magazine I have learned new techniques for doing things on there for example creating a background colour behind an image, and layering up different sections and creating boarders through the stroke method. I also learned the best ways to take sections from one image and placing it on another, by either using the magic wand tool to quickly highlight an area, or by using the magnetic lasso tool to go around the bit you would like carefully and then cutting it out of that image. With my camera I have learned the best ways to make a portrait image of a person, and I have also learned how to take a light trail photograph like the one I have used as an album cover on the contents page. You can do this by using a long exposure time for the image while light sources move in the framing. Before I started the music magazine and all of the research I have done, I had never used logger before, but now I know how to upload work, edit work once it is on there, change background images on the blogger sight and change sizes of sections. Blogger creates the chance to upload work to be marked without paper making it impossible to lose work as it will be on your blog. It also means I can edit it from anywhere.

The advantages of using Photoshop compared to other editing programs is that you can use lots of different tools to create different effects, like the layer mask and gradient tool to make the image go from black and white to colour. A disadvantage to Photoshop is that if you have never used it before you might not know how to use it properly and some of the stuff you create might not be as good as it potentially could be.

An advantage to using a site like blogger is you can upload from anywhere and then you can edit work from anywhere. This means that you can finish work that you don’t quite get done in lessons, once again a disadvantage is that blogger does take a bit of getting use to and you might not know how to organise work properly so it becomes quite difficult to find work at the beginning if you have never used it.

how I attracted my audience

How did you attract/address your audience?

My magazine cover uses direct mode of address on the cover to attract the audience. Direct mode of address draws in the eyes of the audience making them look at the magazine. Secondly, the bright colours of the cover lines and the font they are in are appealing and make you want to look at them. On my magazine cover I have used a QR code which acts as a link to a message when you scan it with a convergent device like a smart phone, having the magazine cover as being interactive and something you can use with your phone makes it intriguing, and makes the audience want to scan the QR code and see what comes up on their phone. The language I have used in the double page spread is very simple, and not of a higher class so it fits in well with the target audience, the article won’t seem condescending to a lower class audience as the music artist I have created for the double page spread likes a lot of the same things as the audience might. Also, the photograph I have used for the double page spread also portrays the person to be in the kind of clothes that the target audience will have as they are not too expensive. The article I have created has a mode of address similar to that of a good friend as the person is speaking out to the audience and answering questions they have asked. This gives it a friendly feel to the magazine, and it is very relaxed compared to a serious article you might find in a magazine. The unique selling point I have used for this edition of the magazine is to have it being the anniversary of the magazines first publishing, and it means that I can write bits about the past year.

Which institution will publish my media Product

What kind of media institution might distribute your media product and why?

When it comes to using an institution to distribute my magazine, I think the company most likely to distribute my magazine would be IPC Media. They do not have many music based magazines, and none of the current ones being published by IPC media are of the same genre as mine. This means that they will not be taking sales of one of their other magazines.

I don’t think the company Bauer will publish my magazine because they already have a set of music based magazines, with some already covering the genre of music my magazine covers. The magazines already on Bauer’s portfolio include Kiss, Kerrang and 4Music which all cover the most popular music.

I also don’t think that Future PLC will publish my magazine because the music magazines they publish are all of the rock, or metal, genre and are the company is very rock orientated when it comes to music. My music magazine does not fall into this genre; so therefore won’t fit in with what they publish.

Conde Nast is the last publisher I have looked into, and I don’t think they will publish my magazine because the type of magazine they tend to publish are of the higher class, and targeted more at well off people. My magazine is targeted more at the working class, so this does not fall into the criteria of Conde Nast magazines. The type of magazine that Conde Nast publishes includes Vogue and Glamour.

I don’t think that my magazine will work if I published it without a distribution company, but I don’t think that this will be best for my magazine. It would cost a lot of money to produce and publish the magazine without another companies input, and then it would be expensive to distribute the magazine. This means that the magazine would need to be very popular from the start, but I think it would take time for a good following of regular buyers to be put into place. I don’t see how publishing and distributing the magazine on my own will be beneficial at the very begging on the magazines sales.

Representation of Social Groups

How does your media product represent particular social groups?

My media product was aimed at both male and females between the ages of 14 and 21. At this age, people are very fashion conscious and play on gaming consoles and go to concerts etc. the main cover image on the cover page shows a fashionable person in a suit which links with the main cover line. Having a fashionable male on the cover line attracts the female audience and then the image on the double page spread also attracts females. But the text on the double page spread talking about a young celebrity who plays on the x-box on a very common game for young males. This challenges the representation of the male youth as always being out causing trouble and breaking the law.

In the main cover image, the person is young, male and in a pose where his arms are folded. This pose is very closed off normally and makes a person look shy, but the pose combined with the head held high and then the direct mode of address gives the person a sense of power and supports the conservative gender stereotype of men having more power. Also, with the costume the person is wearing on the cover, it represents a middle-class person, as they are in smart clothes.

Thursday, 11 April 2013

Forms and Conventions evaluation question

In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?

My music magazine uses the conventions that all magazines have on their front covers. The masthead for my magazine covers the top of the front page. This is done because when the magazine is stacked in shops where they are sold, it is likely they will be stacked on in front of the other. Having the masthead at the top of the page makes it easy for the target audience to find the magazine because the masthead is in easy sight.

The main cover photo follows the magazine convention using mis-en-scene. The use of direct mode of address in the shot, which means the subject of the shot is looking directly down the camera lens, is common in many magazine covers. Also, the shot was a medium shot, showing from about the waist upwards. This is common in most magazine covers as when the whole body is shown in an image it is harder to see who’s in the image, and also means the subject of the image is further away making it harder to show dominance in the shot. In my shot, the image cuts of from the waist downwards. This convention means that the camera seems closer to the person being photographed. For all of my images I have in the music magazine I have created, I have only used medium shots or close ups. Also, in all of the shots the background is empty, so there isn't anything to distract the target audience from the person in the shot.

For my magazine, the image of the person on my front cover is in the middle of the frame. This means that there is more room for the cover lines to fit, as they can be placed on both sides of the photo in the frame, it also means they can be made bigger because there is a larger space for them to fill. This makes them easier to be read from a distance; for example when in a shop. They are also on the lower half of the image because it means the face isn’t covered up by the words. The cover lines are also in the same colour as the masthead, following the convention that using too many colours ruins the look of the magazine cover. One of the cover lines is in a different colour to the rest, this breaks them up making each of the cover lines easier to read, and because its only one in a different colour it also means that very few colours are actually used in the front cover and then the number of colours doesn't ruin the look of the magazine making it look childish and that all the colours were just thrown on the cover.

The colour scheme for my magazine uses a blue colour in the masthead as well as in the main cover line, and an orange like colour for the other cover lines. The same blue colour and font is used for the titles of pages, creating a house style by using that colour and font for the largest writing on each page. For example, for the contents page, the font used is the exact same colour and size as the masthead on the front cover. This font is also used on the double page spread I have created showing that the font is used throughout.

In the Double Page Spread that I have created, I have used a kicker to explain what the section is about and it also acts as an introduction to what the page is talking about. On the kicker I have used a drop cap, this gives an added importance to that section of the double page spread, and it is an indicator of where to start reading from.

In the contents page I have created, I have separated the usual things you would find in the magazine, for example the interviews and posters, and then the features are in a different section of the contents page. This splits up the usual from the one off making it easier for the audience to read up on what they are going to read. The fact on my contents page that the numbering isn’t in order means that the reader will have to read through the magazine to find out what other content is included.